If you don’t already, you should follow CopBlock on Facebook. It’s a page that collects examples, very often with video, of police bullying and brutality run amok in America, and the first thing that astounds you is the sheer volume of such incidents. Exaggerated police responses to low-threat situations drive a great deal of the mayhem in America’s streets, and more and more citizens are documenting the disturbing trend for generations to study and learn from. Continue reading
Recently, news broke that Rolling Jubilee, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the eradication of debt, purchased $4 million in private student loan debt and forgave all of it, alleviating some 2,000 Americans of that oppressive burden. The group purchased the loans for pennies on the dollar from the notorious for-profit Everest College. And it’s only the beginning – according to Rolling Jubilee’s website, they’ve forgiven more than $18.5 million in debt, much of it medical, on only $701,000 raised. Continue reading
The Middle East has been the focus of great fuss in the century or so since the discovery of its oil. Iraq has been of particular interest to the U.S. since the 1980s, when the Reagan administration supplied Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with weapons in his war against Iran, where a revolution had recently overthrown U.S.-installed leadership. When Hussein began acting aggressively without U.S. blessing in the early 90s, Washington turned on him. Since then, Iraq has been subjected to sanctions deemed “genocidal” by the UN diplomat responsible for overseeing them and military actions leading to the deaths of over a million Iraqis and the complete devastation of their infrastructure. In addition, there is widespread sectarian violence where previously there had been almost none as Sunnis and Shias turn on one another amid the chaos of war to fill political power vacuums. Continue reading
There aren’t enough bad things to say about Texas Governor Rick Perry. One could go on and on about the character he plays alone – the hip, intellectual modern Texan. He wants to represent himself as the man responsible for the state’s enormous GDP and as a serious political thinker, but not only is he far from interesting as an intellect, he’s one of the most brazenly corrupt leaders in America’s already brazenly corrupt political system. Continue reading
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